Mother Cap Stone

Natural Rock Feature

Mother Cap Stone (Natural Rock Feature) on The Modern Antiquarian, the UK & Ireland's most popular megalithic community website. 11 images, 2 fieldnotes, plus information on many more ancient sites nearby and across the UK & Ireland.

Images (click to view fullsize)

Fieldnotes

Considering the history of Hathersage Moor and it's conspicuous positioning, I thought that a bit of research may be called for. I came across a piece of information (probably StuBob's notes) that suggests that Mother Cap may have been used as a marker for much of the prehistoric activity in the surrounding hills and was possibly illuminated by fire at night.

This caught my imagination and I thought it may be fun to try to recreate how the massive outcrop may have looked by firelight (of course not wanting to set half of the moor on fire, I used a 5 million candle power torch). So on Tuesday night, I found myself trudging up the lower slopes of Over Owler Tor by the light of a brilliant full moon. Over Owler is an odd place at the best of times, a bit of a geologist's playground with rocks worn into all manner of strange shapes. But by moonlight it is amazing!

The exposures were about two and a half minutes at f8 to catch the colours in the sky, with short blasts from the torch to fill areas of the rock in. Some shots look as if the light is coming from within the rock. The moon is dropped in from a different exposure as the long exposures blew it out to a non-descript glare.

Easy access from the 'Surprise View' car park.
The stone marks the Mid-Winter full moon rise minimum when viewed from 'Wet Withers'. Several books mention that fires may have been lit behind the stone to help with the alignment.